Cryptocurrency Mining Pool Antpool Adds Support For Siacoin Mining

Cryptocurrency mining pool AntPool, owned by Chinese mining hardware provider Bitmain, has announced it will now support the Siacoin token.

Siacoin (SC) is the cryptocurrency used to buy and sell storage on the Sia platform. The platform is a decentralized file storage system that incentivizes people to rent out their unused hard disk drive space to earn Siacoin. It does this by using a blockchain technology whose design is similar to bitcoin, with a few unique technical tweaks that allow it to be used efficiently for file storage. Siacoin’s price moved from $0.025 on January 2 up to $0.10 dollars on January 6. It is trading today at $0.049.

The Siacoin support announcement comes alongside the launch of Bitmain’s newest mining hardware device, called the AntMiner A3. The 815 GH/s miner supports the “blake2b” crypto algorithm, which is currently being used by Siacoin. Last year, there was a pre-order for an official SiaCoin ASIC miner called the Obelisk SC1. However, it seems that BitMain’s AntMiner A3 will be arriving much earlier.

Siacoin supporters who have pre-ordered the Obelisk SC1 are reportedly not happy about Bitmain’s decision to move into the Sia space. Reddit user Taek42, who claims to be part of the Sia developer team, argued that Bitmain might put profit ahead of the sia ecosystem.

“Bitmain has no qualms about overselling their units to buyers,” Taek42 said. “They take massive margins on their hardware (>50%) and make more money than the total block reward at the expense of their customers. They over saturate the market in a way that hurts their buyers. Bitmain will sell more units than the Sia ecosystem can sustain, and many people end up with large losses. Bitmain will not end up with losses, because they were paid up front with non-refundable money.”